The Secret for Turning Work Intrinsically Fun

There are four very simple and by themselves near meaningless pieces of information that I’ve often thought about for the past few years.

The first was in a biography of Napoleon (I can’t remember which one) where he said something in the likes of “I don’t spend much time in leisure, I don’t go to the theater, my sole entertainment is reading reports and analyzing my maps” when sending a letter (probably his wife) on his activities during a military campaign. I read this around my late teens, and thought it to be rather curious.

The second was a very short interview with Warren Buffet, where the reporter asked him what was the cause of his success. Warren says that its because he doesn’t “look at playboy magazines” or reads fiction novels, but entertains himself with reading the financial statements of companies

The third was in one of the books from Nial Ferguson on the Rothschilds (might have been another one of the books, It’s been so long they blend in my head now) where one of the patriarchs of the family sometime in the 18th or 19th century (can’t remember the exact name) writes in a letter that he doesn’t read books, play cards or goes to the theater, but that his entertainment is reading his financial statements and thinking about expanding his business.

In one of the Trump books I read before he ran for president he states that he has a hard time taking long vacations, and is compelled to get back to work since he finds this work fun.

The interesting pattern here is that these men have turned what most would consider objectively boring activities into their pass-time and seem to derive intrinsic pleasure from it. Something similar happens with other activities: People who read often tend to love reading while people who don’t hate it. People who code learn to love programming, those who don’t find it to be a nightmare. Same with math, exercise,  going to bars, etc.

There’s a Chinese saying that says something in the likes of “be sure to like what you do, because you’ll end up liking what you do.”

As an evolutionary rationalization it would make sense that the brain would start enjoying doing necessary activities the individual is stuck doing. But I think Raph Koster, the game designer and author, makes a very compelling argument explaining this phenomena in his blog article Why do we like a given game?

Why do we like a given game?

In it he explains that games aren’t necessarily objectively fun, but in order to find a game entertaining, the brain must have developed certain brain circuity to perform a specific type of activity. The process of developing this brain circuity could have been some disposition you were born with, or developed previously outside of the game (which would create the sensation that you’re naturally gravitated to certain types of games that solve problems that utilize this specific brain circuity). If you don’t have this previous predisposition you’ll have to develop it, and this means that initially playing the game won’t be fun, but be a task. You’re deliberately practicing something to develop neurological connections in the brain that don’t exist. This is literally like developing any other skill, but after you go through the initial pain phase in learning to develop the type of problem solving skills you’ll need for the game or basic understanding of the rules, then the game will become enjoyable as you exercise these created neurological pathways.

This seems to mean that activities aren’t objectively boring or fun, but that its all subjective and this subjectivity depends entirely of a painful learning process required until brain plasticity molds the brain for solving certain type of problem, which then rewards the brain with dopamine when exercised.

This argument here is why I believe that the gamification type attempts to make something objectively fun FROM THE BEGINNING such as school or work is chasing a chimera (not to mention their nonsense on personality types!). What education, government and enterprise should be doing is looking at how skills are developed in conditions of sports, chess and the military (which has much to teach is in the private sector) and apply these skill development practices for an initial period of pain, which once the skills are developed you’ll have the individuals intrinsically enjoy an activity. This is in stark contrast of wanting to change the environment to match the conditions of a game, which is what many of the half-wits in education and enterprise are advocating or selling consultations for.